Define New Initiatives
Establish new initiatives for the IT Division
| Introduction |
| Activities |
Introduction
With an understanding of the HS Agency and IT Division's strategic direction, and how the existing initiatives align with it, new initiatives may need to be established. These activities establish the definition and expectations for these initiatives.
Activities
To define the future initiatives, the Strategy Team performs the following activities:
1. Identify Future Initiatives
Purpose:
This activity ensures the development of an entire set of future initiatives.
Description:
Reviewing the IT Baseline and Assessment as well as the ongoing initiative descriptions will identify the gaps to breach in effectively reaching the goals. New initiatives will need to be defined. This may require the Strategy Team, with the aid of HS program and technical experts, to brainstorm new directions. The teams may wish to build from the lessons learned and directions other States have taken by consulting the State System Profiles portions of the NHSITRC Web site. Many of the future initiatives may be new development or research and development in nature. These initiatives will have to be identified by considering "what" types of nontraditional projects will be necessary to initiate in order to accomplish the IT Division's goals. Initiatives cannot only relate to the products and services that the HS IT Division provides, but also to the processes and technologies used within the IT Division to produce and operate the products and provide IT services.
The Strategy Team identifies a list of initiatives and references to sources of information upon which they are based.
2. Describe and Assess Future Initiatives
Purpose:
This activity describes each of the identified future initiatives and analyzes them against the strategic direction to define essential characteristics of each one. Together with the ongoing initiative descriptions, it provides a consolidated "database" of all possible initiatives.
Description:
In order to ensure balanced analysis, each initiative is documented using a standard template (see Identify IT Initiatives). It is essential that the completion of the template includes not only the static information such as name, description, and who it supports organizationally but also the items addressing consistency with the HS Agency level and IT Division level strategic direction. The completion of those items will have significant influence on the setting of priorities. For example, an initiative that has direct influence on meeting multiple HS Agency and IT Division's goals would be considered a high priority from a strategic point of view. The team documents the initiatives and provides them to the appropriate IT staff for review and comment.